


When the Veils Were Thin

by darkmagicalgirl



Series: Veils Verse [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-13 00:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9097432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmagicalgirl/pseuds/darkmagicalgirl
Summary: The faerie Prince of the Seelie Court seeks to explore the human world and meets an interesting mortal.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiharu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiharu/gifts).



> Happy New Year!!

The human world is much more colorful than Yuri was expecting. He's used to the cold neutral tones of the Seelie court, where everything is made of crystals and ice. The other fae glide about like diamond snowflakes, never so close as to touch. Nothing like this world, with it’s roaring metal monstrosities and flashing signs and everyone packed in so close together that Yuri gets jostled every other step.

"Watch it!" he shouts when yet another ignorant human knocks him aside without so much as a backwards glance. "Get out of my way, stupid vermin! Apologize!"

"Fuck off, brat," someone shouts back and an elbow clips him in the gut, making him sputter. 

It'd be easy, of course, for Yuri to twitch his finger and send all the humans flying in a blast of magic, to shed his human guise and blind them with his true form which they'd dare call an abomination. It might be worth it, to strip the smugness from the air around them, foolish mortal ants shuffling about like they owned the earth, but Yuri holds himself back. He didn't sneak out from under the watch of his guardian fae, Yakov and Lilia, just to use his powers so obviously and get caught. He wants to see the human world, not from under the watchful care of his Princely Guard, but on his own, getting to see and touch and smell what he wishes.

Though that might be easier said than done, it seems. The humans are crawling everywhere now, far more noisy and omnipresent than he remembers from the last time he'd stepped into their side by himself, centuries before Viktor abandoned his throne.

Were they always so _pushy_?

"Wah, you're dressed so pretty!"

"Are you in costume?"

"Are you a foreigner?"

"You're so cute!"

"Let's take a picture!"

"Hey." 

That voice is different than the others, calm enough that it stands out. Yuri turns to see that the speaker is a stocky mortal riding one of the metal horses that roars as it moves, though he has it quiet now. His eyes are bright, for a mortal, and surprisingly deep. He jerks his thumb at the space behind him. 

"Get on."

"What?"

"Are you coming or not?" the mortal asks and tosses something to Yuri. He has to stare at it for a minute to realize it's a crude helmet, presumably it’s weak barrier enough to add protection for a delicate mortal skull.

He's not sure exactly what makes him put the helmet on and get on the metal horse. Maybe it’s the promise of respite from the pushy crowd around him, maybe it’s curiosity about what kind of human invention has gotten the mechanical beast to hold together. Maybe it's the strangely dark eyes of the mortal who asked. 

What matter is that he does it.

The beast's thundering growl is enough to rule out any chance of a conversation, so Yuri focuses on the city lights turning to blurs around him. It's pretty, he supposes, even with the smog laying thick over the air and the strange noises polluting the sky. It's so _vivid_ , even in the growing darkness, smears of greens and blues and reds in every direction, a chaotic jumble of shapes and movements, so different from the world Yuri knows.

The mortal is warm in front of him, and softly fragile in that human way that mean Yuri has to make sure not to accidentally use too much of his true form's strength and injure him. He handles his steed with an ease clearly bred from familiarity. He's comfortable in the city's paths and seems to have a destination in mind, leading them slowly up hills to a high point in the city, though Yuri hasn't a clue where he's being taken beyond that evidence of basic geography.

They come to a halt in a quiet spot, the metal beast spitting out a bit of metal to hold it up as it halts on the side of a road. The mortal gets off the beast as soon as Yuri disentangles his arms from their hold around his waist. He unclips his helmet and begins to walk up the steps, seemingly as assured that Yuri will follow him as he was that Yuri would get on his beast. 

Well, Yuri might have accepted his help, but he is a Prince of the Seelie Court, and he's not just going to follow on the heels of some human for no reason.

"Hey!" he shouts after him. "You can't just drag me off someplace out of nowhere and expect me just to go along with it! What the hell do you want?"

The human stops and looks back over his shoulder, the strange gold of his eyes shimmering in the light from the lamps set up around the stairs.

"I've seen you before," he says, voice level. 

"That's impossible," Yuri says, waving the suggestion away with a flick of his wrist. "You must be mistaking me for some mo— for someone else."

"I know you're not human," the mortal says, still with that unshattering calm. "Come on, the view of the city is best from up here." He turns away, presenting his back to Yuri, as if he hasn't just declared knowledge that the other is an imposter in human skin.

Briefly, Yuri considers striking him down. It is traditional, after all, to leave any human arrogant enough to be aware of their presence the worse off for it, but...

Yuri has to jog to catch up, his human guise's legs too short to match the mortal's pace. He’d made a guess at the general height and appearances of humans, as well as their likely clothing patterns, and it would seem from the reactions he’d gained earlier that he’d missed his mark in a few ways. Even now, he gains stares from a few passersby. Luckily, the staircase isn't too long until it flattens out onto a terrace. Many of the enclaves already have people in them, but the mortal leads him to one that is empty.

The view is as impressive as promised. Yuri can see all the individual points of light from the mortal's various inventions settle in a pattern from here, a dazzling array. But now his attention is caught by something far more interesting.

"What did you mean, you've seen me before?" he asks. "And how do you know I'm not human?"

The mortal raises his fingers to his eyes, brushing over his eyelids briefly. "I've always been able to See," he says and Yuri can feel the import of the word in the weight the mortal gives it. "Things from your side, I mean. Things that are hidden."

"Can you see my true form now?" Yuri asks curiously. He's heard of humans with perceptions beyond their form, powers beyond their species due to a changeling fae somewhere in their ancestry, but he'd thought all those witches had died out or gone into hiding long ago. 

The witchboy's gaze strays, outlining a large shape behind Yuri's human guise. "Yeah," he says. "Though it's like it's there and not there, at the same time."

Yuri nods. "Is that what you meant when you said you'd seen me before? You've seen other Fae?"

"No," the witchboy says. "I meant you. Five years ago, I saw you."

"I don't remember that," Yuri says. "I haven't been in this part of the human world in longer than you've been alive."

"At that time, I was staying in Russia," the witchboy says. "I didn't have very much control over my abilities, even though I'd had them all my life. I had a hard time getting through a conversation with normal people. Then I saw you."

Yuri has no conception of where Russia might be and years such a short span of time for him that it's hard to measure in them, but he tries to think back to then. "I must have been with the rest of the Court," he says.

"Yes," the witchboy says. "There were many others of your kind around you. But I remember thinking... you had the eyes of a soldier."

"Of a soldier?" Yuri looks out over the human city, where the last of the sun's rays are breaking warm over metal and stone. He thinks he can place when that would have been, five human years ago. "I had just moved from my home to the main Seelie Court," he said. "Our previous ruler had run off with some changeling boy from the Unseelie Court and I was brought to the capitol for the Competition of Successors."

"What's that?" the witchboy asks. "Seeing if you can become king?"

"Prince," Yuri corrects. "But, yes. It was the fiercest competition I had ever seen, all the most powerful fae from out court fighting to take the crown. I promised myself I wouldn't complain until I had won."

"And did you win?" The witchboy looks at him with calm curiosity. Yuri has rarely met someone with as steady a core as this odd mortal. Lillia comes the closest, but her core is cutting glass and tempered steel, not the solid stone of the man in front of him.

"Yes," he says, simple as that. "What's your name?"

"Otabek Altin," the witchboy says. "Am I allowed to ask for yours?"

"You can call me Yuri," Yuri says. For some reason, he doesn't feel the need to stick all his important titles in front of it. "Is that why you brought me here, then? You were curious about what you had seen five years ago? You should know from your stories that my kind and yours don't often meet without violence."

"I just thought we were alike, that's all," Otabek says with a shrug, as if the idea of telling the Prince of the Seelie Court that he's alike to a mortal, witch or no, is anything but asking for a painful death. "Well? Do you want to become friends with me or not?"

Yuri pauses at that. The very idea of a Fae and a human becoming friends ought to be laughable, but then, no matter how far back over the centuries he thinks, he can't remember anyone having asked him to be friends before. It's such a human concept, filled with that same transient vibrancy that saturates their cities and their lives, and Yuri finds himself inexplicably charmed by it.

"Yes," he says, and takes Otabek Altin's outstretched hand. He can feel a tingle of Premonition up his spine, the kind that has been gifted to him by the crown as a rare power of foresight, that tells him he's just opened up the branches of many possible futures, flowing like a many-forked stream.

_— a flame in the witchboy's palms lighting up Yuri's face — Seelie and Unseelie blood mixed together on a battlefield — legs wrapped around his waist, heat pulling sweat to the mortal's brow — Viktor's changeling boy, wreathed in flame — Otabek, a sword in his hands — laughter under the moonlight — a human city covered in ice — blood soaking out from a blade through Yuri's chest — soft lips against his own, an unsure breath sweet with promise — golden eyes under a starlit sky — a ritual, blood for blood and life for life — the blow of a horn signaling the start of a hunt — pain and suffering, joy and beauty, love and life, all mixed together —_

Watching the sun set over the temporary city of mortal splendor, the witchboy at his side, Yuri thinks about the future and grins with far too many teeth. This, he thinks, shall prove interesting.


End file.
